Making Employment Law Truly Accessible
Chief Judge Christina Inglis’s 2025 Ethel Benjamin Address reframes the challenge of access to employment justice with striking imagery: Parliament has laid a “reinforced concrete floor” of minimum entitlements wages, holidays, protections against unlawful dismissal and discrimination—beneath which employers cannot go.
That floor looks reassuring from a distance. Yet, as her Honour warns, the “yellow brick road” leading to enforcement is uneven, costly, and confusing. Rights on paper mean little if workers cannot traverse that road in practice.
Employment law matters, but it must be accessible to do the job Parliament intends. Minimum entitlements are only as strong as a worker’s ability to enforce them. If the substructure is porous through delay, cost, or complexity, the protective floor fails. Rights become illusory for those least able to bear the burden of litigation.
To deepen the analysis, consider a second metaphor: employment law as a lifeboat in stormy seas a vessel meant to keep workers afloat when workplace crises hit. Over time, barnacles accumulate: procedural technicalities, fragmented pathways between the Authority and the Court, and inconsistent guidance for self-represented parties.
Leaks represent costs and delays that imperil the vessel. A lifeboat that cannot be launched quickly, or that sinks under the weight of process and price, does not save lives; it merely promises safety while leaving vulnerable people adrift.
The Chief Judge rightly emphasises that many users appear without representation. The system must meet them where they are through plain-language resources, navigable processes, and realistic timelines. Otherwise, the constitutional promise of equal justice under law becomes unequal access, skewed by resources rather than rights.
Currently, the system is bogged down with administrative clutter (despite the Act’s intent to be “free from technicalities”), delays of six to eighteen months in the Employment Relations Authority and 6 months or more for mediation, and prohibitive costs. Even modest filing fees deter low-paid or recently dismissed workers. Increased costs, representation, evidential preparation, and time off work compound the problem.
For respondents, cost can incentivise hardball tactics: protracted interlocutory skirmishes and document-heavy defences that raise the price of enforcement for claimants. Justice delayed is justice denied; in employment disputes, delay can mean months without income, improper withholding of wages, reputational harm, and evidence dissipating.
The pathway from the Employment Relations Authority to the Employment Court is not intuitive for non-lawyers and often difficult even for lawyers. Rules around pleadings, evidence, remedies, and challenges can feel like legal navigation without charts. Her Honour’s call to pave the “yellow brick road” recognises that the system must work for real users, not idealised, represented parties.
Collectively, these frictions are the barnacles and leaks that undermine the lifeboat’s function. The answer is not to abandon procedural integrity, but to engineer the system to deliver robust, timely justice without imposing disproportionate burdens on the most vulnerable.
Guided by the Chief Judge’s address, several principles emerge:
Plain-language navigation: Every touchpoint forms, notices, websites should be written for lay readers, supported by visual explainers and step-by-step checklists. Introductory materials exist; they should be expanded and standardised.
Scaled procedures: Processes should match the dispute’s stakes. Small claims (e.g., wage shortfalls) should move through simplified, faster tracks, while preserving full process for complex cases. Interim relief should be easier to obtain.
Active case management: Judges and Members should aggressively manage timetables, disclosures, and interlocutory disputes to minimise delay, with early identification of core issues and evidence truly in dispute.
Support for lay litigants: Expand duty adviser schemes, template pleadings, and guided online forms to reduce error and anxiety. When parties understand the process, hearings are shorter and fairer.
Cost transparency: Publish typical cost ranges, timeframes, and settlement rates to inform realistic decision-making and incentivise early resolution. Transparency helps litigants weigh risk and return.
These principles strengthen the concrete floor and refit the lifeboat, making both metaphors real in practice.
Don’t just admire the floor, pressure-test it. Lawyers, unions, employer associations, and community advocates can design low-cost service models (fixed-fee advice clinics, unbundled representation, supervised junior advocacy) and co-author plain-language resources with the Court and Authority.
Practitioners can also curate best-practice bundles, model witness outlines, and settlement frameworks that shorten hearings without sacrificing fairness. This is not about gaming procedure; it’s about aligning practice with Parliament’s intent that the Authority be “free from technicalities.”
Chief Judge Inglis has given the profession two powerful images. The concrete floor reminds us that minimum standards are non-negotiable. The yellow brick road warns that the journey to enforcement can be treacherous. The lifeboat metaphor adds a practical test: Does the system float when storms hit?
If employment law is to do the job Parliament intends, we must scrape the barnacles of complexity, patch the leaks of cost and delay, and ensure that all who need help can board and launch the vessel. Otherwise, rights will remain pristine on paper and perilous in practice—a promise admired from the shore while workers drift beyond reach.
Acknowledgements: This article builds on and responds to Chief Judge Christina Inglis’s Ethel Benjamin Address of 31 October 2025 and the Courts of New Zealand’s publication of that address.
(See: Chief Judge Inglis, Ethel Benjamin Address (31 Oct 2025); Courts of NZ publication page for the Address.)
PDF of the Address • Courts’ summary page
Author note: The views expressed are mine and intended to spur constructive, cross-professional collaboration on accessibility reforms.
